This was definitely one of those; let your brain wander kind of moments. I have seen this quote on rubber stamps and one of my fave things to doodle is flowers. This page was just waiting to happen. I think it would make a good card, what do you think?

Doodle your fave quote

Items used

All the usual suspects ;)

Faber Castell Pitt artist pen

Faber Castell Polychromos Pencils

Daler Rowney Basic Sketch book

I’m getting to think a page listing my kit would be helpful and then I could point you all to it ;)

What inspires you to doodle, random thoughts, images you see, quotes that roll round your head for days!!!! I have the kind of brain that is very literal which means I don’t always ‘get’ what was originally meant by phrases. I blame my late Mother whose often used phrase of ‘Don’t come running to me when you break your leg falling off that’. My brain would think, well you couldn’t run with a broken leg so huh??

I often get doodle ideas from such misinterpretations. Wanting to draw the literal result of what people say. Makes me laugh, the same is true of what I read, being dyslexic it often takes me several read throughs to understand what is meant, if not in a hurry I can also laugh when I get the wrong word for things, it may start with the same letter, or sound the same as the word I’m going for but be completely wrong. Mmm Maybe I should write the ‘wrong word and doodle the image of the thing I was going for.’ Its annoying as hell when you are in a rush, but as long as it’s not important it can cause much hilarity and creates the game of ‘guess the word I really meant!’

Inspired by Flora Chang’s doodle in Craft-a-doodle book I drew this for Valentines Day. Turns out I really like this folk arty style, who knew hehe. Just goes to show, it’s always worth exploring new areas with your art and creativity, you never know where it will lead you.

Valentine’s Doodle

This was created using

Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens

Faber-Castell PolyChromos pencils.

Daler Rowney Basic sketchbook

Some interesting points came up during these doodle experiments, apart from try what you have in your stash before buying new stuff. I had in my stash some Polychromos pencils that a dear friend gave me some years back when they were all the rage for using with a solvent for coloring in. Nice as they were, at the time I didn’t enjoy the overly waxy finish and glossy result they gave when you layered colours. However, I tried them again with the Daler Rowney sketchbook, which has a little more tooth than cartridge paper and this time enjoyed their almost crayon like result.

Using Polychromos pencils almost feels like colouring with Galaxy chocolate. They are super smooth and silky but they do have a high wax content so unless you have them super sharp they can look like wax crayon. Although I find this difficult for sketch work, for doodling and more folk arty projects they are great. Amazon had a set of 36 in their sales at Christmas so now I’d fallen in love with them I treated myself to a set to increase my colour options. If you haven’t tried them before, I’d highly recommend you get a two or three of the individual pencils and try them on your favorite drawing surfaces and see if you enjoy them before purchasing bigger sets. It took me a while but now I appreciate their texture. Just depends on you style and skill level I guess. They do need more work to blend than other pencils, which I struggled with, thanks to poor dexterity so for me they don’t win over my Inktense for sketching and more realistic style of art.

Moral of the tale, if you have art materials that you don’t think you like, try them for a different style of art or on different surfaces. Some things just have a learning curve and it’s getting to know how to charm your materials to get the best from them. Check out Pintrest and the like to see how others use them and then look for tutorials. It could be down to learning the right techniques.

Have fun experimenting, and your sketch book is a great place to try out new materials and new ideas.

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Have fun
Billie :)

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